Friday, 28 August 2015

US majors continue their "Unfair" campaign.

The US majors ,with their history of protection from financial reality by Chapter 11, continue to cry "Foul" about "unfair" competition from the Gulf trio. They now say they lose 20% of their US-Middle East business to these carriers.

Nothing to do with the fact that despite having the rights to do so the US airlines fly very few city pairs between the US and Middle East,- or far fewer frequencies. Or the fact that many customers don't quite get the appeal of flying on a US legacy airline with its highly unionised "We are here primarily for your safety" legacy style cabin service when there is a very different alternative way of spending the next 15 hours parked next to it.

As we have said before and doubtless will say again, the US and indeed some of the European legacy majors also overlook the fact that the geography of the worlds's air routes has changed. The generation of ultra long haul airliners started with the 747-400 and has expanded across all aircraft sizes from the 787-8 to the A380 . This means that America originating and destined passengers can now bypass the traditional need to change in Europe to get pretty well anywhere in the Middle East, West Asia or Africa. Instead they can and do fly nonstop to all these places via an easy transfer in one of the Gulf states or Turkey from an increasing number of US cities.So they do,- as well as getting excellent service on the way. It's not unfair.